Dark Rivers of the Heart

on a higher plane than did the average man. Her silence was only indicative of her struggle to translate her intuition into intellectual concepts and thereby more fully understand him.

She drove out of the parking lot.

Roy took off his leather gloves and returned them to the inside coat pocket from which he had gotten them.

For a while, Eve followed a random route through a series of residential neighborhoods, just driving to drive, going nowhere yet.

To Roy, the lights in all the huddled houses no longer seemed to be either warm or mysterious, as they had seemed on other nights and in other neighborhoods, in other cities, when he had cruised similar streets alone. Now they were merely sad: terribly sad little lights that inadequately illuminated the sad little lives of people who would never enjoy a passionate commitment to an ideal, not of the sort that so enriched Roy’s life, sad little people who would never rise above the herd as he had risen, who would never experience a transcendent relationship with anyone as exceptional as Eve Jammer.

When at last the time seemed right, he said, “I yearn for a better world. But more than better, Eve. Oh, much more.”

She didn’t reply.

“Perfection,” he said quietly but with great conviction, “in all things. Perfect laws and perfect justice. Perfect beauty. I dream of a perfect society, where everyone enjoys perfect health, perfect equality, in which the economy hums always like a perfectly tuned machine, where everyone lives in harmony with everyone else and with nature. Where no offense is ever given or taken. Where all dreams are perfectly rational and considerate. Where all dreams come true.”

He was so moved by his soliloquy that his voice became thick toward the end of it, and he had to blink back tears.

Still she said nothing.

Night streets. Lighted windows. Little houses, little lives. So much confusion, sadness, yearning, and alienation in those houses.

“I do what I can,” he said, “to make an ideal world. I scrub away some of its imperfect elements and push it inch by grudging inch toward perfection. Oh, not that I think I can change the world. Not alone, not me, and not even a thousand or a hundred thousand like me. But I light a little candle whenever I can, one little candle after another, pushing back the darkness one small shadow at a time.”

They were on the east side of town, almost at the city limits, cruising into higher land and less populated neighborhoods than they had traveled previously. At an intersection, she suddenly made a U-turn and headed back into the sea of lights from which they’d come.

“You may say I’m a dreamer,” Roy admitted. “But I’m not the only one. I think you’re a dreamer, too, Eve, in your own special way. If you can admit being a dreamer…maybe if all of us dreamers can admit it and join together, the world could someday live as one.”

Her silence was now profound.

He dared to look at her, and she was more devastating than he had remembered. His heart thudded slow and heavy, weighed down by the sweet burden of her beauty.

When at last she spoke, her voice was quavery. “You didn’t take anything from them.”

It wasn’t fear that made her words shimmer as they passed along her elegant throat and across her ripe lips but, rather, a tremendous excitement. And her tremulous voice in turn excited Roy. He said, “No. Nothing.”

“Not even the money from her purse or his wallet.”

“Of course not. I’m not a taker, Eve. I’m a giver.”

“I’ve never seen…” She seemed unable to find the words even to describe what he had done.

“Yes, I know,” he said, delighted to see how completely he had swept her away.

“…never seen such…”

“Yes.”

“…never such…”

“I know, dear one. I know.”

“…such power,” she said.

That was not the word he had thought that she was searching for. But she had pronounced it with such passion, imbued it with so much erotic energy, he could not be disappointed that she had yet to grasp the full meaning of what he had done.

“They’re just going out for dinner,” she said excitedly. She had begun to drive too fast, recklessly. “Just going out to dinner, an ordinary night, nothing special, and—wham! — you whack them! Just like that, Jesus, take them out, and not even to get anything that belongs to them, not even because they crossed you or anything like that. Just for me. Just for me, to show me who you really are.”

“Well, yes, for you,” he said. “But not only for you, Eve. Don’t you see? I removed two imperfect lives from creation, inching the world closer to perfection. And at the same time, I relieved those two sad people of the burden of this cruel life, this imperfect world, where nothing could ever be as they hoped. I gave to the world, and I gave to those poor people, and there were no losers.”

“You’re like the wind,” she said breathlessly, “like a fantastic storm wind, hurricane, tornado, except there’s no weatherman to warn anyone you’re coming. You’ve got the power of the storm, you’re a force of nature — sweeping out of nowhere, for no reason. Wham!”

Worried that she was missing the point, Roy said, “Wait, wait a minute, Eve, listen to me.”

She was so excited that she couldn’t drive anymore. She angled the Honda to the curb, tramped the brakes so hard that Roy would have been pitched into the windshield if his harness hadn’t been buckled.

Slamming the gearshift into park with nearly enough force to snap it off, she turned to him. “You’re an earthquake, just like an earthquake. People can be walking along, carefree, sun shining, birds singing — and then the ground opens and just swallows them up.”

She laughed with delight. Hers was a girlish, trilling, musical laugh, so infectious that he had difficulty not laughing with her.

He took her hands in his. They were elegant, long-fingered, as exquisitely shaped as the hands of Guinevere, and the touch of them was more than any man deserved.

Unfortunately, the radius and ulna, above the perfectly shaped carpals of her wrist, were not of the supreme caliber of the bones in her hands. He was careful not to look at them. Or touch them.

“Eve, listen. You must understand. It’s extremely important that you understand.”

She grew solemn at once, realizing that they had reached a most serious point in their relationship. She was even more beautiful when somber than when laughing.

He said, “You’re right, this is a great power. The greatest of all powers, and that’s why you’ve got to be clear about it.”

Although the only light in the car came from the instrument panel, her green eyes blazed as if with the reflection of summer sun. They were perfect eyes, as flawless and compelling as those of the woman for whom he had been hunting this past year, whose photograph he carried in his wallet.

Eve’s left brow was perfect too. But a slight irregularity marred her right superciliary arch, above her eye socket: It was regrettably too prominent, only fractionally more so than the left, formed with barely half a gram too much bone, but nevertheless out of balance and shy of the perfection on the left.

That was okay. He could live with that. He would just focus on her angelic eyes below her brow, and on each of her incomparable hands below her knobby radius and ulna. Though flawed, she was the only woman he’d ever seen with more than one perfect feature. Ever, ever, ever. And her treasures weren’t limited to her hands and eyes.

“Unlike other power, Eve, this doesn’t flow from anger,” he explained, wanting this precious woman to understand his mission and his innermost self. “It doesn’t come from hatred, either. It’s not the power of rage, envy, bitterness, greed. It’s not like the power some people find in courage or honor — or that they gain from a belief in God. It transcends those powers, Eve. Do you know what it is?”

She was rapt, unable to speak. She only shook her head: no.

“My power,” he said, “is the power of compassion.”